ABSTRACT
Leadership is commonly associated with privilege—the title, the office, and the seat at the table—yet its costs are rarely discussed at the outset. This article examines four realities that accompany any leadership role: responsibility, oversight, accountability, and the authority to choose one’s mission. Drawing on historical examples, including Harry Truman and Winston Churchill, and on nearly three decades of experience in K–12 education, the author argues that leadership seldom waits for readiness, that every individual is already leading someone, and that declining a mission can itself be an act of leadership. The article concludes with a charge to accept the missions that are one’s own and to release those that are not.
Keywords: leadership, accountability, responsibility, educational leadership, decision-making
The Privilege Is Advertised; the Cost Is Not
We have all heard that membership has its privileges. Sometimes that is true, but not always. We have also heard that leadership comes with a cost, and that, I would contend, is true in every case, without exception.
The privilege is what gets advertised: the title, the office, and the seat at the table. The cost arrives later, usually without notice, and it is always paid in full.
What You Actually Sign For
Four realities come with the chair, and no one reads them aloud at the announcement.
Responsibility. The outcome lands on your desk whether or not you caused it. You own the results of decisions you did not make, made by people you did not hire, under conditions you did not choose.
Oversight. Someone is always above you: a board, a council, shareholders, a congregation, or a loving spouse waiting for you at home.
Accountability. The distance between what you say and what you do becomes public property. Leaders can lose organizations over that gap long before they lose them over strategy.
The power to choose the mission. This is the reality most leaders underestimate. Authority is not only the right to act; it is also the right to decide what is worth acting on and what you will walk past.
Sink or Swim
Study the great leaders of history, and a pattern quickly emerges: Most of them were not groomed for the role. They were dropped into it.
Harry Truman had been vice president for 82 days when Franklin D. Roosevelt died, and he was not briefed on the Manhattan Project until after he had been sworn in. Winston Churchill became prime minister on the same day Germany invaded the Low Countries. Neither man was given a runway; each was handed a crisis and a clock.
I have watched the same dynamic unfold in far smaller rooms. A principal walks into a building nobody wanted. A superintendent inherits a budget that was broken two administrations ago. A new supervisor takes over a crew after the last one quit. There is no transition plan, no honeymoon period, and no orientation binder; it is sink or swim.
That is not a flaw in the system; it is the system. Leadership rarely announces itself in advance, and it almost never waits until you feel ready.
You Are Already Leading Someone
I believe there is leadership potential in every individual. I also believe that each of us is already leading someone, even if that someone is only ourselves.
That is not a motivational slogan; it is an accounting of reality. Your children are watching how you handle a bad quarter. Your staff is watching whether you tell the truth when the truth costs you something. Your friends are watching whether the person in the meeting is the same person in the parking lot.
The question was never whether you would lead. You are leading right now. The only open question is whether anyone, including you, is better off for it.
Will You Accept the Mission?
Look back across your own career. Count the times you were thrust into a challenge and the times you walked toward one on purpose. In every case, there was a moment of choice.
The choice is simpler than we tend to make it. In the spirit of Mission: Impossible, the question is this:
Will you accept the mission?
Will You R.I.S.E.?
I explore this idea at greater length in my book, Leaders R.I.S.E.: Leading in the Battlefields of Education & Life, but the short version is this: Rising is not a feeling. It is a decision, made before conditions are favorable, usually in private, usually without applause, and almost always before you can see the far side of it.
When the Answer Is No
This is the point I most want to emphasize, because misunderstanding it burdens good leaders with unnecessary guilt: Declining a mission does not mean you are not a leader. It may simply mean that the mission was not yours.
There is a difference between declining a call and dodging one. Leaders who turn down a role because the season is wrong, the fit is wrong, or their families need them more than the board does are not retreating. They are exercising the fourth reality on the list: the power to choose the mission.
Sometimes the greater mission is at home, in serving as a spouse, a parent, a son or daughter, or a friend in a time of need. Choose carefully.
“Saying no to the wrong assignment is what keeps you available for the right one.”
The Charge
Somewhere this week, a mission is going to find you. It will not be convenient, and it will not come with a transition plan. It will come with a cost, and you will see that cost clearly before you see the reward.
Accept the missions that are yours. Release the ones that are not. Above all, never confuse the privileges of the chair with the price of the seat.
God bless you as you lead well.
About the Author
Dr. Jeff Collum is the CEO and executive founder of TRIAD Consulting and the director of educational partnerships at ABCover. A former teacher, principal, and superintendent with nearly three decades of experience in K–12 education, he is the author of Life Lessons and Leaders R.I.S.E.: Leading in the Battlefields of Education & Life, both available on Amazon.
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